It's Time For The United States To Cease Financial Aid To Egypt

Doug Bandow
, ContributorI write about international politics, economics, and development.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Egypt, July 3, 2013(Photo credit: Moravsky Vrabec)

Egypt is a disaster veering toward catastrophe. President Barack Obama’s decision to ignore U.S. law by continuing financial aid will only exacerbate the situation. The administration’s signal achievement is that almost everyone in Egypt now blames America, which has provided almost $75 billion in financial assistance to Cairo over the years.

Egypt became a top aid recipient after Anwar Sadat switched sides during the Cold War. His government was paid even more for making peace with Israel. Washington argued that the stability seemingly purchased was a good deal. No longer, however.

First, the law requires halting assistance. If the administration doesn’t want to obey, it should urge Congress to amend the law. Only by applying a Clintonesque twist can what happened in Cairo—the army arresting the president and top aides, prosecuting opponents, shutting television stations, detaining journalists, freezing assets, and shooting demonstrators—be called something other than a coup. In fact, the Associated Press detailed how the military planned its takeover for months and aided the group Tamarrod in building opposition to former president Mohamed Morsi.

The Heritage Foundation’s James Phillips acknowledged that “the letter of the law does require a cutoff of U.S. aid,” but contended that “the spirit of the law, which was passed to help protect democracy, would support continuing aid because the coup was launched against a leader who was ignoring the will of the people in order to impose his anti-democratic Islamist agenda.”

Traditionally conservatives do not favor legal feelings over enactments. More important, Morsi was not alone in his authoritarian tendencies. Mubarak-era military, judicial, and bureaucratic leaders worked to block democratic rule at every turn. Nor was Morsi the first elected leader to inflate his own powers: George W. Bush and Barack Obama come to mind.

Moreover, it is sheer fantasy to impute democratic yearnings to the Egyptian military, a praetorian institution which served as the guardian of dictatorship since the 1952 coup against King Farouk I. Egyptian military officers are a caste apart, pampered apparatchiks who control as much as 40 percent of the economy. They always have been far more interested in power and privilege than democracy and liberty. Noted Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute: “the military traditionally represents the older elite as well in Egyptian society, which feels that it’s their God-given right to do this sort of thing.” For the generals, Morsi’s authoritarianism simply became a pretext for their authoritarianism.

Third, whatever political influence the U.S. may have gained from foreign aid was dissipated when Cairo realized that it could count on receiving the money irrespective of its behavior. The Washington Post’sDavid Ignatius contended: “Better to continue aid, and insist that it be conditioned on the military scheduling early elections.” However, that requires the willingness to stop writing checks, which Washington has never done and obviously will never do.

Where is the evidence of American leverage? The Mubarak regime rejected both economic and political reform, creating the corrupt, inefficient state which fails the Egyptian people today. As the revolution unfolded the administration successively declared itself for Hosni Mubarak, his negotiated exit, and his speedy exit, without Egyptians paying the slightest attention. Although the administration attempted to mobilize its network of U.S. trained Egyptian officers, Adm. Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that money “couldn’t buy the U.S. the connections it needed in a time like this.”

The decision to continue aid under President Morsi had no positive effect. He pursued exclusionary political and incompetent economic policies, apparently against Washington’s advice. The security services worked to undermine his government, also presumably against the administration’s wishes.

The coup even more dramatically demonstrated U.S. impotence. Observed the Hoover Institution’s Kori Schake: “Reports that the national security advisor, secretary of state, secretary of defense, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had tried unsuccessfully to restrain Egypt’s military led to the [conclusion] that the United states has very little influence over a military determined to once again entrench itself above elected civilians.”

No one in Cairo is listening to Washington now. The military is adopting the Egyptian equivalent of North Korea’s “military first” policy, shooting demonstrators, making political decisions, and appointing civilians friendly to the military. Even the coup-friendly Wall Street Journal admitted: “the military drew up the new constitutional ‘road map’ in secret without consultation with the anti-Morsi opposition. The interim president will rule by decree. The constitution, which an authoritarian Mr. Morsi rammed through late last year, will be redrafted by unelected officials,” mostly Mubarak retreads.

Worse, contra Washington’s plaintive pleas, the military has reverted to the Nasser-Sadat-Mubarak policy of suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood. If the movement goes into violent resistance there will be neither stability nor democracy in Egypt.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns visited Cairo two weeks after the coup. Brotherhood leaders refused to see him. Morsi’s opponents, the fundamentalist al-Nour Party and liberal Tamarrod movement, also rebuffed the U.S. envoy. At least Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi—who simultaneously serves as head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, defense minister, and deputy prime minister—gave Burns an audience. However, the regime continued to target Brotherhood officials even as Burns called for “the military to avoid any politically motivated arrests.”